by Cindi Myers
“We don’t know that yet.” Paige hurried over to put her arm around Maya, even as she pulled her phone from her pocket and punched in a number. “Hello, Adelaide? This is Paige Riddell. We just heard the ambulance and wondered if you know where it’s going?”
She listened for a moment, then said, “Wait a minute. I’m going to put you on speaker so Lacy and Maya can hear. They’re with me. Would you mind repeating that?”
Adelaide’s voice was loud and clear on the phone’s speaker. “I said, Travis and Gage found Henry Hake’s car in the ravine below Dakota Ridge.”
“Was Henry Hake in the car?” Lacy asked.
“They don’t know,” Adelaide said. “They’ve got search and rescue out there trying to figure that out—the ambulance is headed out there on standby. Though if poor Henry’s been in that car as long as he’s been missing, he’s past any help the EMTs can give him.”
Maya sank onto the sofa once more, too shaky to stand. “We thought maybe they had found little Casey,” Paige said.
“Not yet,” Adelaide said. “Travis did say there was no sign of her out at Ed’s place.”
“Thanks, Adelaide,” Paige said. “You’ll let us know if you hear anything?”
“You’ll probably hear from Travis or Gage before I do.”
Paige ended the call and sat next to Maya. “I’m sorry it wasn’t better news,” she said.
Maya nodded. She was fighting hard to keep it together and not break down. She had to hold on to the hope that Casey was alive and okay, but the more time dragged on, the tougher that was to do.
The doorbell rang. Paige patted Maya’s shoulder and stood. “I have to get that.”
“Of course.”
She left and Maya listened to her footsteps retreating down the stairs. “Would you like more wine?” Lacy asked.
Maya shook her head. “I think I’ve had enough.” She didn’t think she could drink enough to forget for one second about her lost niece or her dead sister, so why bother trying?
Then a man’s voice drifted upstairs, and every nerve in her body leaped to attention. She stood and walked toward the door to the hallway, even as the man’s footsteps started up the steps. “Hello, Maya,” Gage said.
She studied his face, trying to read the emotion there—was he coming to bring bad news, good news or no news at all?
“We don’t have any word about Casey yet. I’m sorry,” he said. “But we didn’t find any sign of her at Ed Roberts’s place. We checked his apartment in town, too, but I really don’t think she’s been there.”
“Thanks for letting me know.” She marveled at how calm the words sounded, even as her stomach churned.
“Do you still want to go out to the camp tonight?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Then I’ll take you,” he said.
“You don’t have to do that,” she said. “I know where it is now. And I’m sure you have work to do. I’m not your full-time job.”
“The sheriff wants an officer out there overnight, so I volunteered,” he said.
“All right. I’ll just pack a few things.”
When she left, Paige and Lacy were questioning him about Henry Hake’s car. In her room, Maya stuffed a backpack with a fleece pullover, hat and gloves, and another pullover that would be way too large for Casey, but would keep the girl warm if she was cold. She looked around the room but could think of nothing else useful to bring, so she hurried back upstairs. Gage met her in the hall. He didn’t say anything until they were in his SUV.
“If you want to see your sister and her husband, the coroner has the bodies ready for viewing,” he said quietly.
The meaning behind his words hit her like a bucket of ice water. She had kept all her energy focused on Casey, not allowing herself to think about Angela and Greg, and the fact that they had been murdered.
Gage must have read the emotions on her face. “I know it’s a lot to ask,” he said. “But we need you to confirm the identification.”
She clenched her hands, nails biting into her palms. “I won’t believe they’re gone until I see.” Even then, she wasn’t sure the reality would ever sink in. Angela and Greg were so young. They weren’t supposed to die. Not this way.
“I’ll let him know we’re on our way.”
He made the call while she sat, numb, staring out the windows but not seeing anything. Gage touched her arm. “You need to fasten your seat belt,” he said.
“Oh, sure.”
He drove across town, to a white Georgian building with columns across the front and a circular drive. A low sign by the drive read McCasklin’s Funeral Home. Gage drove around to the back and led the way to a side door, which was opened by a middle-aged man in a dark suit. “I’m Ronald McCasklin,” he said, offering his hand. “I know this is a difficult time for you, Ms. Renfro. Please let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.”
Given his profession, he had probably said words similar to this many times before, but they struck Maya as sincere. “Thank you,” she whispered.
“They’re in viewing room one,” McCasklin said to Gage.
“This way.” Gage put a hand on her back and guided her down the hallway, their footsteps silent on the thick burgundy carpet.
“I thought we’d be going to a hospital or a morgue,” she said, keeping her voice soft.
“We don’t have either of those here,” Gage said. “When the coroner needs facilities for an autopsy, he uses this place.” He opened the door with the gold numeral one affixed to its center. The overhead light cast a soft golden glow over the figures lying side by side on rolling steel tables, sheets pulled up to their chins, as if they had merely stretched out for a nap.
But no one napping would be this pale or this still. Maya stopped halfway across the room, rooted in place by the sight of her sister and brother-in-law’s cold, impassive faces. Whoever had worked to make them presentable had combed their hair over the worst of their injuries, but couldn’t completely hide the wound over Angela’s forehead. Maya put a hand over her mouth, trying—and failing—to stifle a sob.
Gage turned her into his chest and she surrendered to that calm strength. He held her while she sobbed, not saying anything—not trying to quiet her or uttering any of the awful empty platitudes people turned to in such times. He simply stood there and held her, and let her soak his uniform shirt with her tears.
Chapter Nine
Maya didn’t know how long she cried, but after a while she managed to stem the tide of tears. Gage stuffed a handkerchief into her hand—not a paper tissue, but a white cotton handkerchief that smelled of starch. “Are you ready to leave?” he asked.
She nodded. “Yes.” She had seen more than enough. The people lying on those tables bore a resemblance to Angela and Greg, but they weren’t them. The personalities who had given life to those waxen shells were gone from this place. That was the loss she was mourning, the deaths she might never come to terms with.
Ronald met them at the door and silently pressed a plastic cup of water into Maya’s hand. She nodded her thanks and let Gage lead her to the SUV. He helped her into the passenger seat and buckled her seat belt, as if she were a little child.
He said nothing, and she appreciated the silence. After a while, some of the shock began to recede. She sipped the water and stared out at the houses they drove past. “Where are we going?” she asked after a while.
“Nowhere in particular,” he said. “Just driving. Checking on the town. It’s part of the job to keep an eye on things.”
“So you’re looking for crime?” She studied a bungalow they passed, the front yard filled with blooming flowers. “Is there a lot of that here?”
“Not really. But I’m not really looking for crime. Or not only looking for crime. I’m looking for signs of anyone in trouble. It might be a kid out after dark by himself,
or a man who’s locked himself out of his car. It might be papers or mail piling up at a house where I know an elderly person lives alone.”
She shifted toward him. “It’s like you’re watching over the whole town.”
“I guess you could think of it like that.”
She drank the rest of the water and set the empty cup on the floorboard. “Seeing Angela and Greg that way—it was so horrible, and yet, I think I had to do it. To accept that they’re really gone.”
“If you hadn’t done it, would you regret it?” Gage asked.
“Probably, yes.”
“Then you probably made the right decision.”
“Maybe. Do you have any idea who killed them?”
“Not yet. We’ve got someone going through the items in the tent and their SUV, hoping for a clue. And we have their phones and are looking at those records.”
“What are you looking for?”
“Someone they might have talked to or arranged to meet. Anyone they might have had an argument with.”
“You don’t think it was an accident—a hunter’s stray bullets or something like that?”
“No. Whoever killed them did so deliberately.” He glanced at her. “I’m sorry. That’s hard to hear.”
Yes, it was. But she would rather know the truth than try to soothe herself with lies. “I can’t imagine what either of them could have done to upset anyone,” she said. “They both had so many friends in Denver. And they were so happy.” She bit her lip, dangerously close to another flood of tears.
Gage swung the SUV back onto the town’s main street. “I thought maybe we’d get some food to go and take it up to the camp,” he said.
“All right.” She didn’t feel like eating, but he was probably hungry. He had been working most of the past two days. “You must be exhausted,” she said.
“It hasn’t caught up to me yet, but it will. Then I’ll sleep twelve hours and be good to go again. It’s like this when something big is going down.”
He stopped by a café and she waited in the cruiser while he went inside. She pulled out her phone and pretended to focus on it, aware of curious eyes on her as people walked by on the sidewalk or came to the doors of adjacent businesses. Maybe some of those people felt sympathy for her, or maybe they were only curious about the woman with blue hair who was riding with the deputy, wondering if she was his latest conquest.
Gage returned to the cruiser, a large brown sack in his hand, which he stowed in the back seat. “Anything else you need before we head out of town?” he asked.
“I don’t think so.”
As he drove toward the highway, she angled toward him, searching for anything to distract her from her grief and worry. “Paige told me you have a reputation as the town Casanova,” she said.
He glanced at her, then shifted his gaze back to the road. “Don’t believe everything you hear.”
“But you have dated a lot of women.”
“I’m friends with a lot of women. We go out and have a good time. I don’t go around being a jerk and breaking hearts.”
“Okay.” What had Paige said... Gage says he’s not interested in a relationship.
“So what is it—you just don’t want to be tied down, or you’re afraid of getting hurt, or what?” she asked.
“You think a guy needs a reason to be single? That if he is, it means he’s hurt or damaged or something?” No mistaking the annoyance in his voice.
“No. I was just curious.” And it was interesting that he got so defensive.
“What about you?” he asked. “Are you seriously dating anyone?”
“No.” She wasn’t dating anyone at all.
“So are you afraid or hurt or something?”
“Or something.” She faced forward once more.
“I’m all ears,” he said.
She sighed. She had asked for this, hadn’t she? And what difference did it make if she shared her sorry dating history with Gage? In another day or two, she would probably be leaving town and would never see him again. “I dated a guy for three years,” she said. “About the time I was expecting him to pop the question, he told me he wanted to break up. And yeah, it hurt. And maybe it made me a little gun-shy. So I’m not blaming you for not wanting to get serious with anyone—I was just curious.”
He didn’t say anything, his hands rubbing up and down the steering wheel as if he were debating between polishing it and ripping it off the steering column. “I dated a woman right after I started with the department,” he said. “I wasn’t thinking about marrying her or anything like that, but I was really into her. She told me she didn’t see a future with a law enforcement officer—the job is too hard on long-term relationships. I decided she was right.”
“Just like that, you let one woman decide your future?”
She half expected a growl to accompany the glare he sent her way. “You let one guy who dumped you decided your future.”
Touché. “Isn’t that great?” she said. “We have something in common.”
A heavy silence stretched between them as the road wound up above town. It narrowed and the growth of trees became thicker, the houses fewer.
“Being a deputy in a rural county like this isn’t as dangerous as being a cop in the inner city, maybe,” he said. “But there are risks. I know my mother worries every day about Travis and me. Lacy worries about Travis. I don’t see any reason to put that burden on anyone else.”
“The right woman wouldn’t see it as a burden.”
“Then I guess I haven’t found the right woman.”
He pulled onto the shoulder in front of Angela and Greg’s property. A Rayford County Sheriff’s Department cruiser sat in the space where their SUV had once been parked. Maya supposed the vehicle was at some sheriff’s department facility now, being examined for evidence.
A tall, rangy deputy walked out to meet them. “Maya Renfro, this is Deputy Dwight Prentice,” Gage introduced him.
Dwight shook her hand. “I’m sorry I don’t have any new information about your niece,” he said. He turned to Gage. “Search and rescue confirmed there’s nobody in that car, so the wrecker will be out tomorrow midmorning to haul it out.”
Maya left the two men discussing this and moved to the fire ring, where a few coals still smoldered. Angela and Greg’s tent sat to the side. Maya glanced in the door, then looked away. Empty of the clothing and sleeping bags and other things that had belonged to her sister and Greg, the tent was just another object cluttering up the landscape.
Gage joined her, carrying two camp chairs and the brown paper sack. He handed her the sack and set up the chairs, then began adding wood to the fire. “When the sun goes down up here, it gets pretty cool,” he said. “We’ll be glad of the fire.”
Casey would be cold, she thought. Maybe she would see the fire and come to them.
She sat in one of the chairs and Gage took the other and began unpacking their dinner. He passed her a barbecue sandwich. “Try to eat something,” he said. “There’s chocolate pie for dessert.”
Maya started to cry. The burst of tears shocked her—she had thought she had pulled herself together. But his mention of the pie undid her.
Gage set aside the food and took her hand. “What is it?” he asked.
“Chocolate pie,” she sobbed. “It was Angela’s favorite.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“It’s not your fault.” She grabbed a paper napkin and blotted her eyes. “How could you know? And I’ve got to learn to cope with this. I can’t fall apart every time something reminds me of her.”
Gage released her hand and sat back once more. “That will take time.”
She nodded and picked up the sandwich. “I’ll be fine. I promise I’m not going to do this all night.”
“Would it help to talk
about her?” he asked. “Tell me a good memory you have.”
She had so many memories of Angela—she searched for one that would give him a good picture of their relationship. “When we were in middle school, she had most of our classmates convinced that she and I were twins—our story was that she was smarter, so she had managed to skip a grade, which explained why she was ahead of me in school.”
“Sounds like she was pretty persuasive.”
“I thought being twins would be cool, but I was annoyed that she insisted she was smarter—even though it was probably true.”
“When Travis and I were in middle school, he told everyone that I wasn’t his real brother—that our parents adopted me when the circus came to town,” Gage said.
“That wasn’t very nice.”
“When my mother found out, she grounded him and made him spend the first month of summer vacation scraping and painting one of our barns. By the second week, we both complained so much she made me go out and help him.” He tossed another branch on the campfire. “I guess in the end, it made us closer.”
“I was always grateful to have a sister who could be my friend, too,” she said. She had been lucky, even if her luck had run out too soon. She wrapped her half-eaten sandwich in a napkin and set it aside. “I think I’ll have some of that pie now.”
The pie was excellent—densely chocolate and smooth as silk, whipped cream mounding the top. “Angela would have loved that,” she said when she was done, her voice only a little shaky.
Gage leaned forward and wiped a smear of chocolate from her mouth. Such a simple gesture, yet it struck Maya as one of the sexiest things anyone had ever done for her. Was there something wrong with her, that she could feel aroused at a time like this? Or was it only a testament to how much life fought to win out over death every time? Was this just a way for her body to remind her that for all the bad things going on right now, she had to hold on to the promise of good in the future?
Their eyes met and she realized Gage was feeling it, too. She leaned closer and put her hand on his shoulders and kissed him. A gentle brush of her lips, then a harder caress, then a fierce, openmouthed kiss. A thrill raced through her and she leaned in to it, exulting in this feeling that somehow cut through the smothering blanket of grief.